In the year 165 AD, a plague began to break out in Rome. Brought back from the far eastern corners of the empire, the virus spread from person to person, house to house, until nearly all of Rome was overwhelmed.
The doctors could not keep up. Neither could the morticians or the grave diggers. Rome’s economy was devastated. Millions died, millions fled. And the plague simply dragged on, year after year, without serious respite for over a decade.
Thirty six months ago, history repeated itself all over the world when COVID-19 began infecting people. A new virus. The right conditions. An epidemic became a pandemic. Our public health was better–we didn’t futilely burn incense like the Romans, hoping to ward off illness–but in the end, we were at the mercy of a force outside our control just the same. We had to adjust. We had to accept. We had to face–some of us more directly than others–a very real threat of death. Death in the air. Bodies in coolers in the streets. Plans to use public parks to handle the overflow.
Maybe you got COVID, maybe you didn’t. Historians debate whether Marcus Aurelius ever actually caught the measles or smallpox virus that was the Antonine Plague, and whether he died from it or not. But Marcus himself was more interested in another virus that spread. As he wrote in Meditations, there are two types of pestilence in the midst of an epidemic, or indeed any crisis–there is the one that can destroy your life and there is the one that can destroy your character.
Selfishness. Cruelty. Indifference to the fate of your fellow humans. Cowardice. Desperate panic buying. Paranoia. Crippling anxiety. These were things seen in Marcus’s time just as they were seen the last few years. Same goes for scapegoating, demagoguery, misinformation, and all the other things that crisis can bring out of leaders and populations alike. Perhaps you were infected like this. Or perhaps there was something more personal you caught during the pandemic–bad habits, a relapse, screwed up priorities, skewed values. Barring a bad case of ‘Long COVID,’ the effects of this may last longer than the Coronavirus.
As we reflect now on this third anniversary of our own plague, it’s worth evaluating what you may or may not have been infected with. Marcus broke into tears whenever the victims of the pestilence were mentioned–he knew how much had been lost, literally and figuratively. It’s important, whatever the future holds, that we do not needlessly add ourselves to that casualty list.
It’s counterintuitive to think of Meditations as a ‘pandemic book’ but it was. That’s when Marcus was writing, that’s what he was dealing with. He was trying to ward off the infection that he saw so many Romans fall prey to, he was trying to remain good. If you haven’t read Meditations yet, you must! We have our special edition here at Daily Stoic (translated by Gregory Hays) that we think will help get you through whatever the future holds, plagues or otherwise. Also, The Boy Who Would Be King was written during the early days of the pandemic (three years ago exactly) and may be of use to you and your children as a fable of how to be great and good in any and all situations.
